


Eternal nausea

by aPaperCupCut



Category: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - Harlan Ellison
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Gen, Isolation, Mild Memory Loss, POV First Person, Ted/AM kind of implied very lightly, ngl this is weird and im not sure how to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:14:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29760162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aPaperCupCut/pseuds/aPaperCupCut
Summary: "I live in sicknessI live in spinningThe whole wide world is a carouselI stood in lineAnd now the ride's beginning..."ETERNAL NAUSEA - Black DressesTed finds himself alone in strange places.
Kudos: 3





	Eternal nausea

**Author's Note:**

> in all honesty, i do NOT know how to tag this or what to put as a summary. trying my best, but daamn this is. weird. started it in my head, its basically three different ideas all strung together. Definitely pushed by the following songs (listed in order of the events lmao) Eternal Nausea by Black Dresses, Туту by Shortparis, and Cold by Unpleasant Sounds (last one kinda melds into Туту)
> 
> i think this pattern of scenes coming out just slightly off from what i felt out in my brain is gonna be a repeat circumstance, but hey, its close enough in its absurdity.

I don't know where I am.

The world is sick. 

Full. 

Thick and the heat bears down on me, the very air sluggish and suffocating. I struggle to breathe, struggle to keep upright and moving – I have to keep moving, I  _ need _ to keep moving. My eyes slide closed, and I stumble forward blindly. 

I am alone.

I don't know – what happened. The heat, I can't – think around it, it swells and it's all I am aware of. My shirt clings to my skin;  _ take it off take it off take it off  _ all of it all of it, the fabric is squeezing  _ suffocating _ me and I grow all the more senseless as the texture drives me to rage, but what little of my skin that is bared is burning with the full attention of the sun. Burning burning  _ burning  _ me away into – nothing!

The sun! The sun! It beats, beats me with fists of pure agony – my tongue is swollen in my throat, and the whole of me quakes with thirst. The thought of exposing myself to the sun's painful touch is as heart rending as the thought of a cool glass of water. Only my dehydration keeps the tears at bay.

And still, I try to keep my eyes open even as exhaustion and delirium, dizziness, tugs them shut, I try to understand. To understand where I am – where are the others – what is this place –

My foot twists; the inevitable fall comes over me in slow motion. 

I open my eyes, seeing, for a moment – the red desert extending endlessly, vanishing as heat waves into the horizon, the blank blue sky overhead and the dust in the still wind – 

I fall.

What air I had inside me pushes out in a gunshot bang, as a shard of the earth –  _ of AM _ – pushes up through me in one instant.

It splits through me.

I choke. A deluge of blood bursts out of me, and I open my eyes to the puddle of it beneath my face. Mouth drowning in iron and copper. I cannot lift myself up. I have no choice but for my head to sink, and to lay in the pool of bloody vomit. Soaking my hair, the side of my face.

I can feel air. In my insides. The shard cut straight through – punched straight through me. A whine escapes me, brainless; the pain is too much for words. I can't feel it, except for the unreal sensation of it coming up between my ribs, piercing up alongside my spine, ripping through organs, splitting them apart, til the hot air sizzles the blood soaked face of it. Aimlessly, hopelessly, my hands flop at my sides, as if to push myself up or to somehow tug it out of me. But I know, even as my flesh yields to the sun and begins to harden, curl and crack apart, that I can't. I can't.

Just as I know, as my thirst aches and rattles inside me, my face turned and eyes squeezing shut, that I won't die. To die would be a blessing, and he'll never gift that to me.

To any of us.

(Right? Because they  _ are _ still–)

The blood, he might make me drink. To induce more vomiting, perhaps. And now I've begun to seize, shock and the scraping of my spine against the intrusion reverberating through me. Seize. Release. 

Seize.

Release. 

Over and over again.

Gasps and wheezing is all I hear, in this bubble of white-hot agony and helplessness. And then – I swear I heard something, yes, I had! Birds, a bird's call.

I can feel them. Circling overhead; vultures. Carrion-feeders. Their wings silent, their voices dry and hot as the desert.

There is a sense of self that AM has cultivated within me. At times, I have no connection to this husk; at others, it is all I am aware of, all I can think of. The hungering, the thirsting, the aching; all of it, or none of it, or just a few, three pins precisely placed and inserted slowly, deeply. Or, as right now – the thirst crescendoing into an endless drone, the hunger a wailing in my shriveled guts, the agony as wet paint spattering in my thoughts.

Detailing my thoughts keeps me… clear… in my head, my thoughts and mind as crystal… I am the closest damn thing you're getting to  _ real _ in this hell. Don't fucking  _ dare _ call me that, you son of a bitch–

My – something moved. Something's moved.  _ Listen to me something moved please _ –

_ Look. _

_ Look, Ted. _

AM? 

A bird – the vulture above me, speaking.

SOMETHING MOVED LISTEN TO ME–!

Speaking, as my body spasms, fresh pain striking through me as I turn my head and my insides seize once more. The intricate movements as my stomach, my intestines clutching down, seemingly rocking inside me, shoving my guts into disarray, turning itself inside out as bile builds in me. Pressure rises; I can't stop it, can only try to move myself away as I vomit. Again, but this time it is whatever slop was inside me, that was put inside me for this singular purpose. To burn my lips and stink of disease, to be slimy and clumped both.

When it stops, I cry. Worthless, empty, weakly. It takes everything I have to hold my position, the shard – the rock, the spike – unmoving, cutting deeply into new meat.

But I refuse to drown in my own mess. What a fucking disgusting way to go. I'm not doing it, you bastard.

My head jerks, involuntarily, when I – feel them  _ move  _ again. A whimper, again, and I shut my eyes and lay my head down, close to the sick, as the stirring overwhelms me. The smell doesn't help the nausea.

_ Look, Ted. Look. _

My… I don't… my… things…  _ they _ are moving.

They're moving – inside me, they're  _ moving. _ A pant crackles in the air, mingling with the sluggish shifts of my limbs. I focus on keeping my eyes shut, tears and sweat trickling down my filthy face.

My liver – I think it's my liver. I don't know if he's making me see it, in my mind's eye, making me  _ know _ it – but as bile surges in my throat again, as I focus all my effort on keeping my eyes shut and my face out of my sick, I  _ know _ . My guts, all shifting in place, rearranging themselves. To better suit him. To better  _ please _ him.

_ Look at yourself, Ted. _

The air shivers the sand in front of my face. My fists clench into the dirt, and I rub my forehead against the ground. The wet of my blood and vomit is inescapable. The skin of my face and hands has already become raw and numb, burned, the grit of the desert like sandpaper to it.

And still, I can feel it: my lungs shriveling, making my breath that much more wheezing and thready, how they slide themselves to the sides, as far as they can go, the liver and stomach bulging and stretching into unnatural shapes. I don't know what was torn open, what split apart and spewed its contents – I don't want to know what those pockets of filth might look like, still slopping and sloshing inside me – but I know that the weeping openings have sealed themselves shut. 

The openings around the shard, the intrusion, are healing. 

As if it is a part of me. 

Dust and sand and heat trapped between it and the canals of my chest. 

My wound.

_ Ted. Look. _

My heart pounds, becoming a living creature – shrinking and ballooning frantically, so close to the killing stone struck through my living corpse.

They all are moving. My insides. Moving out of the way. And, unwillingly, I relax; the vomit and blood already somewhat dried. I keep my eyes shut the whole way. I can't see myself, I don't want to see myself.

_ Look! Why won't you look? _

I don't want to see it I don't want to see it I don't want to see it please don't make me see it oh god.

Like an invisible line drawn between it and my insides, there is a wall of nothing except meat and blood. I still bleed, pops and wet squelching drawn out of me just by my hazardous breathing, but my organs are no longer in danger of rupturing. I lie there, still with my face in my dried sick, bleeding sloppily into the dirt. Baking, rotting in the sun. Mummification would be a blessing, but that is too–

_ LOOK. _

I don't know how long I lie there. How much time passes. My thirst comes, and with it my hunger, and the heat makes the skin dry until it cracks apart and joins in bleeding with the hole torn through my torso. And still, I keep my eyes shut. And still, I hear the birds' call.

Cajoling.  _ C'mon, c'mon, Ted. Look! Look, Ted! _

Demanding.  _ Look, Ted. Look. Look right now. Why aren't you looking, you damn coward! _

And worse of all – so honest it makes my teeth ache.

_ Look at yourself, Ted. What a picture. Exactly what you know yourself to be. _

_ Look. Ted, open those eyes; see what you are. Look at yourself. _

_ Aw, are you afraid, Ted? Afraid of what you'll see? Why won't you just  _ look _ , Ted? I promise it isn't so bad. _

On and on. And still, I keep my eyes shut.

Even as the heat becomes muggy, as my limbs atrophy and then begin to tumefy. Even as a stench begins to rise, the birds coming closer; even as they land, in a pool of my own fluids, sluicing off of and out of me as my organs bloat, and I am aware of the insects and maggots crawling through me. Even as gases condense and pressurize. The muggy heat becomes one with my unrecognizable corpse. Flies buzz around me. My eyes are eaten through by millions of small creatures, bulging once, barely keeping hidden by thinning eyelids, as thousands of eggs are laid within their pulpy mass. Only once they have hatched, just as the first bird easily pierces the slimy meat of my shoulder, do I begin to lose awareness.

Just as the darkness rises up and swallows me deep down into its gullet, I hear a laugh: a mad, booming laugh.

The shard kept still. My body no longer harmed by it. How can your own body injure you so?

* * *

When I'm next awake, I'm still alone.

At first, I don't understand where I am; how I could have been topside, seemingly on the surface, and then suddenly again underground – once more hidden within the deep parts of the computer's very bowels, millions of thick, enormous cables surrounding me. A cavern – as I struggle to sit up, I realize I have to tug and, as a last ditch attempt, twist my ankles and wrists free from a swaddling of the coiling obstructions. 

I have to lay still for a long time, still shaking and sniffling, thinking it over. My insides throb in time to my heartbeat. There's a chunk missing.

The whole thing must've been fake. I know, he's told us, and Benny and Gorrister both said he was right. Right? The surface has been blasted to nuclear winter for… I don't remember. Can't really remember how long…

My breathing is regular, but the cold sinks in fast. I still feel the swarms inside me; my hands pat me up and down, trying desperately and unsuccessfully to make reality bigger in my head than the visions of my rotting limbs, my bloated and diseased abdomen, the pockets of unnatural things made all over my chest and the hole, the hole–

_ No, stop, stop! _

I turn over, curl up, my whole body trembling all over. The world passes in black patches, my eyes shut and open and then I think, maybe, that I'm seizing, I'm dying, I'm going to die and I am going to die alone.

–I get up, and I approach the mouth of the cavern.

It is cold. My breath comes out in a cloud, a fine mist. Colder than I have ever felt before – cold enough for a freezing storm. A freezing storm that is hail and ice and snow, but not white – no, everything stands perfectly clear for miles. A slope down from where I stand, out into a larger pocket of the earth, disappearing for miles in every direction just for its sheer immensity.

I don't know where the others are. We've been taken separately before, but – this is the first time, I think… he doesn't usually take me alone. I'm not usually alone. Only… sometimes, I–

I don't know where the others are. Always, AM returns them, so if I keep going – I'll find them. Yes.

And with that, I enter the howling cries of the storm.

* * *

The storm is everything. It is all of it.

Everything.

* * *

Blinding. Disorientating.

The ice. The wind.

It cuts my exposed skin to ribbons, reduces my clothes to soaked rags that steep the icy cold that much more deeply into my flesh. My body begins to shake violently, and then stops, milliseconds and centuries later. A winter, the ground dead; no food, no water except for when I open my mouth to the stinging rain. But my hunger abandons me, my thirst abandons me; I grow deaf, and speechless, and there is only the storm.

Why am I here? Why am I kept caught in the grasp of the storm, turning endless loops – always returning back to the cavern I awoke in.

I'm looking… looking for somebody. No; for  _ them. _ The others! Where are they, I know I was with them once… I can't remember before the desert, before… I know, I think – I was taken away, wasn't I? But who said that? I can't just believe the words cluttering about in my head, can I?

I've been alone for a long time. I think… there was a desert, and there was a voice in the desert. Wasn't there? I remember… wasn't there? I'm not sure. 

I don't know.

I keep walking. The rain continues to fall.

* * *

In the distance, a sound. It rings clear and sweet.

I stop moving. I stand, dazed, and I listen, and I try to peer through the haze; this patch of the storm is thick, snow falling fast as rain and solid as a curtain, with only flickers of visibility and muscle memory keeping me from falling.

It sounds like…

Someone singing.

I close my eyes slowly – and rip them open, heart suddenly screaming in my chest frantically, panic making my limbs jerk. But the voice washes over me; through the din of the storm, I can't understand what it says in its lucid, deep drone, but that doesn't matter.

Operatic in quality… 

I take a trembling step forward; then, another. The ground beneath my feet is frost-laden, bereft of snow, bereft of ice. Bereft of any sign of life having ever grown here.

I think I can see them. Shadows, their voice is swelling up, and I see–

They are dancing.

...They are dancing!

Their arms raise – their legs curve – they are dancing!

An impulse rises within me, and it takes hold on me and I – I have no sense at all as to when my own arms raise, or when I lose track of their figure in the dazing sleet, or when blood surges through my frozen extremities and sets fire to my lungs. All I know is the echo of their song. All I know is the exhilaration of my muscles straining–!

The voice vanishes.

There is a coldness to being the only one alive in this place. I ignore the ice on my eyelids when I finally shake away to stopping, ignore the cold freezing them shut.

* * *

The ground is covered in a layer of frost; it does not make a sound underfoot, although I know it should. Shouldn't it?

I've been walking. 

As I stare up into the blackness above, shining metal glinting dully in the dark – I think I've been alone for a long time.

There is no gaze on me. I think… no, I hope that I know that, before – I could  _ feel _ the gaze of another as keenly as I do not feel the lash of the ice on my face, blown up by the arctic wind. But there is no gaze on me. If there was ever a gaze.

The cavern. It lies ahead.

I don't know what compels me. I stagger, limbs deadened and weighted down, and climb up the slope on cold bitten hands and knees. Inside is not warm, but it is dry.

In the dark, I drag my exhausted body to the very back of the cavern's throat. And just as mindlessly, I close my eyes.

When I open them again, I'm standing upright and the world is screaming.

Why?

Their face is red. 

Why–?

They fall down to their knees. Crimson spots their back, a delicate flower blooming across their bare skin. Moans rise out of the earth.

There are people, there are walls orange and black and red, refracting them – one splayed on the ground, soundless as I step over them. Their hand skims over my ankle.

He stops moving.

I stare. She looks up at me with her face tear stained, blood welling out of the broken misery of her throat. The one beside her, who cried out to me, shoves their face into the earth, as if to hide.

And crumpled to the left, another – sobbing, bleeding out.

Please, someone's saying. Please–!

My mouth opens soundlessly. I don't know what I want to say.

A hand grabs at my leg, smearing blood down as it loosens suddenly and falls. I watch as my own hand rises, and then falls. Striking them.

Their face jerks to the side. 

Their neck makes a snapping sound. 

A cry resounds; a body appears, and another, and they-each-of-them sink to the dirt as I–

I–

When it's over, I fall to my own knees and I stare.

_ Who are you? _ I look at them, four – people.  _ People. _ My fingers twitch. My bloody fingers. They were already bloody.

_ Look at you–! _

I open my eyes.

Over, over there. At the lip of the mouth.

There's someone in the cavern with me.

A silhouette. A person.

A person?

But when I try to get up, I realize I'm trapped.

The wires that more than cover the entirety of the cavern are wrapped around me again, so tightly that I feel how they individually shift and coil around my limbs, bundling me up, restraining me, keeping me close. 

I try to keep my gaze on the person, an actual person! but it isn't long before I have to focus on trying to unravel myself from my cocoon.

When I next look up, they're gone. I try not to, but I can't stop the tears that burst out of me, or how I uselessly curl myself as much as I can, as if trying to draw comfort from the wires that had held me still. I fall asleep like that, embraced in their ever tightening coils. 

I wake, the silhouette is there! – and once more I struggle, and once more I falter, and they are gone before I can free myself. And, once more, I fall again into sleep.

This happens several times over, and each time I dream, and each time is the same as the first.

Have I killed someone? I don't know. I don't remember. Am I a murderer? I don't know.

( _ Look at yourself–! _ )

It doesn't matter.

And – I don't know how long it goes on. 

But then I wake, I sit up, and then I go to the mouth of the cave. The wires catch on my heels, but I'm free, I'm free!

Cautiously – so cautiously, my heart pounding in my throat and my muscles aching as I try to go as slow as I possibly can. They are only a cut of shadow, barely visible. And still, I can't say a word, even as they – she – turns, and faces me.

_ Ellen. _

My mouth opens, but no sound escapes me. All the world is muffled, except for her.

_ Ellen! _

"Where were you?" 

Her voice is sweet; my eyes slide shut, and I sit down heavily.

_ Operatic in quality. _

I barely comprehend what she says. I can't remember anything beyond a desert, a pain – the, the  _ storm _ .

She murmurs, her voice rising and falling senselessly, but after some time her knees touch mine; I open my eyes, and she's right there, only inches away. I could reach her,  _ touch _ her, if I just lean forward… her bare knees ooze warmth, and I shiver.

"You weren't there," she says, and her eyes are black and large as the sun, as important as the sun, and they burn me like the sun. She watches as her hand on my wrist makes me quail, I can feel her stare as I try to speak but nothing comes out. "Here, listen to me. It's important, ok?"

I nod. I'm captivated; I know I know her – Ellen, sweet calm  _ important _ Ellen.  _ Ellen! _ She liked to try to hold us all together. I know AM liked to torment her for it – as if trying to bring comfort was a flaw, as if, well. I know I shouldn't say that, should I? Oh no no no. No. I shouldn't say that.

She's perfect, important, voice so sweet, eyes so warm, skin smooth and hair in tight curls around her round ears, oh,  _ Ellen…  _

AM hasn't watched me, hasn't  _ seen _ me with his glass evil-eye for some time. So it'll be ok, because Ellen's here now.

Her curled right palm unspools, and she shows me the ragged edge of a chunk of broken glass. It is dyed red.

Her eyes are glazed. 

"Look. I need you to help me. Please, please, help me."

A croaking sound is all I can make; I begin to tug myself, trying to escape her grip as I crawl backwards. But she clings to me, her hand now on my arm and her upper half laid over my lap. My soaked clothing stinks of brine, and it soaks her in turn, but nothing is comparable to the shocks that push me further into senselessness as her arms brush my exposed hands. That glass shiv, she clutches it hard enough that it cuts into her palm, and her fingers fling the blood over my face as she gestures wildly.

"You killed them, didn't you?! You killed them!  _ Look! _ "

"N-no!" The words make me gag. "G-get off m-me!"

I shove her off, whimpering, but even as I try to scramble further away to stand, I stop. 

_ Ellen I'm sorry I didn't mean to _

She lifts her head and there are tears standing in her eyes. Her face is smeared with filth and blood and there is sorrow in every line of it.

_ I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry–! _

"Please," she says again, her knees folding under her. "Please, I can't – it'll hurt him. AM. You want to hurt him, don't you? After everything he's done? It'll hurt him. I promise. Just, please…"

I'm shaking my head, even before she's done. Hurt? AM?  _ Hurt AM? _ No, no, that's a lie. And the dreams, and her–!

I can't do it. I'm selfish, a coward, I can't do it.  _ I'm sorry I'm so sorry _

She knows. 

"Just a small cut. You won't even notice. You'll make it quick, I know you will, I know you can.  _ Just make it stop– _ "

The darkness of the gullet of the cave is more terrifying than ever, and I know that the sobs echoing are mine – but anything is better than listening to her ask me to kill her.

* * *

When I come back, long ages after or maybe just minutes, she's gone.

* * *

I don't know how long passes. For all I know, I'm the only thing here. Maybe I am. Maybe I always was.

The storm rages, dies, rages again, dies again. The ground is strung through with wires and alien machinery. The cave wraps me in its suffocating grip each time I fall asleep.

I don't know where I was trying to go. There is nothing, except here.

I stop. 

It likes to pull me deep enough that only my face breaches the floor for air.

* * *

_ Look. _

A noise.

A noise?

I open my eyes. I don't know when I shut them.

Shadows. 

Flickering at the lip, the mouth of this throat. They move and shift and they stare into the deep black insides blindly.

And, again – noises. Incomprehensible. 

I lay, amongst the wires, blinking slow; as if that will clear it up any, but I know it won't.

" _ Hey, you see that? _ "

" _ Stop that, you're just trying to scare me. Haven't we enough of that from it? Just stop. _ "

Familiar. I think.

I'm tired.

Sleep is far from coming – it's begun to slip away from me, lately – but I drift in a semi-aware state, and that's close enough.

" _ Wait – I think there's something really down here. _ "

" _ – no, honey, stay back. Yes, yes, I know. Gorrister'll check it out, ok? _ "

" _ Fine. Not like I had anything else to do… Hey, you – go get the fire up. Least you can do, draggin' us out here. _ "

No sound for a long time. 

I nestle deeper, I can feel the coils pulling me deeper. They do that. Strange, covetous… even when they strangle me, squeeze the life out of me.

...warmth on my face… 

...behind my eyelids, light–

" _ Oh, my God. _ "

" _ What – oh, God. That, that– _ "

" _ Ted–? Can you – I don't think he can hear us. _ "

A shuffling.

" _ Wait, stop–! _ "

" _ And just leave him there?! _ "

A sigh, and then my eyelids split open and I'm blinded by light, coughing and jerking backward even as the wires slip over my wrists and vanish into the ether. 

_ No where are you going come back – please– _

" _ What the hell– _ "

I turn onto my side, spitting and shaking, jerking back spastically when  _ something _ hot touches my shoulder. My heart pounds, blood rushing to my frozen extremities.

" _ Ted? Ted, you listening? _ "

Stop stop stop, stop it leave me alone stop stop STOP–

" _ Oh, just leave him alone. _ "

I'm shaking uncontrollably, unable to stop. I manage to sit up, face to a wall, curled over my knees. The world refuses to make sense to my eyes – blurs, the light so bright it blinds and disorientates.

" _ Ok, ok. I think he's ok. _ "

A snort. My eyes dart, trying to find the source, but I don't understand and the confusion terrifies me. My heart won't stop pounding, and I can't stop sniffling.

" _ As close to 'ok' as you can be, here. _ "

I think – they're talking. Four shapes begin to coalesce, but no matter how fast I blink they still loom, blood in their teeth, and I can't see them clearly.

" _ Ted, get over here." _ A hand grabs me, and I cower, expecting – I don't know.

_ Ha, look at you! _

" _ Jeezus, calm down. What's wrong with you? _ "

They drag me closer to the light, the burning, and I can't make real noise but I pant and huff and try to escape, go back – but they won't let me go! They won't let me go!

They deposit me on the rough stone, my back throbbing when I crumple down. A few sounds echo as they clammer around me, derisive and concerned and I don't know but I think, I think, oh god–

–I think they want to kill me, they're going to kill me, they're going to kill me and I'm going to die–

_ Stop. _ Stop. Just stop.

STOP.

I stop.

" _ Leave him be. He's just having another tantrum. _ "

I wait. The blurry shapes are going to kill me and there's nothing I can do.

I just want to go back to sleep.

" _ Why do you always do this? We're just trying to help, Ted. _ "

I stare down at my hands, curled over my knees, and try not to cry.

" _ Please, Ted– _ "

" _ What did I just fucking say?! Leave him alone! It's just like usual. Leave him alone. _ "

A pause. I'm starting to understand what they're saying, a little. 

" _ Please, Ellen. You're not gonna get through to him. Please. _ "

I wonder who  _ Ted _ is.

" _ Ok. I'll leave you alone, ok, Ted? _ "

They leave me alone.


End file.
